Dana White: Zuffa didn't set out to dissolve Strikeforce after purchase

LAS VEGAS – The recent announcement that Strikeforce’s Jan. 12 card in Oklahoma City would be its final one on Showtime came as little surprise to most.

In some ways, it was one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets – fueled in large part by assumptions that was the direction things were always headed, anyway.

The show also will be the last in Strikeforce history – a fact that wasn’t pointed out in official releases and statements by the promotion or cable network, though that, too, was always presumed to be the case.

On Thursday, following a pre-event news conference for Saturday’s UFC 155 pay-per-view in Las Vegas, Zuffa and UFC President Dana White told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that the Jan. 12 card, headlined by a welterweight title fight between champion Nate Marquardt and Tarec Saffiedine, will indeed be Strikeforce’s last.

But White also said those who have implied Zuffa only purchased Strikeforce in March 2011 with the intention of dissolving it are mistaken.

“I see a lot of this s— on the Internet, people saying, ‘Oh, I knew this is exactly what we knew was going to happen. They bought (Strikeforce) to bury it,'” White said. “Any of you guys who were around me at the time know that was absolutely not the plan. I was pumped up about it and looking forward to getting into it.”

Not long after Zuffa’s purchase of the promotion, White said his plan was to get involved in the production side of things with Showtime and steer it in a different direction. But talks with Showtime officials never really panned out, and ultimately White wound up separating himself from at least the public side of the promotion.

In recent months, when asked about Strikeforce’s future in light of a pair of canceled shows in September and November, White typically would say, “I don’t run that promotion.”

And even now that it’s official that Strikeforce, which is nearing 30 years old after starting as a kickboxing promotion in 1985 before moving into the MMA realm in 2006, will be no more, White said he’s still in no mood to talk about it.

“I’m still not the guy (in charge),” White told MMAjunkie.com. “I could keep you here for four and a half hours and you’d go crazy – you’d have some real good stuff. I’m so glad it’s over.”

White said Showtime will retain the library rights to Strikeforce events it has broadcast “for a couple years, I think,” but that the UFC also would own that library of fights.

The Strikeforce purchase was the most recent of three promotion’s Zuffa has purchased to go along with the UFC. In 2007, Zuffa purchased PRIDE and later dissolved it, though it holds the rights to a vast library of that promotion’s fights. In 2006, Zuffa purchased World Extreme Cagefighting and in 2010 announced that promotion’s bantamweight, featherweight and lightweight divisions would be folded into the UFC.

White said only the WEC purchase came without difficulties.

“None of the companies we’ve bought have been perfect except the WEC,” White said. “The WEC was a great move, a great transition. Everything worked out great with that. All the other ones, they were what they were.”

So would White ever go down that road again, given the troubles that came with the Strikeforce deal?

As the UFC 189 tour made its last stop in Dublin, featherweight champ Jose Aldo was met with a torrent of abuse from the Irish fans. It might have been unpleasant, but it might also have been just what he needed.